“He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry,” Page says of Rubin. “Most people thought he was nuts. But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices.”

Page says Rubin recently determined that “it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google.” Rubin will be replaced by Sundar Pichai, a veteran of the Chrome browser and Apps teams at Google.

“The pace of innovation has never been greater, and Android is the most used mobile operating system in the world: we have a global partnership of over 60 manufacturers; more than 750 million devices have been activated globally; and 25 billion apps have now been downloaded from Google Play,” Page writes, praising Rubin's contributions to the Android ecosystem.